tomb of the Apostles, the real centre of Christianity. Her zeal is inflamed at the view of the disorders which are preparing the great schism of the West, and she displays an extraordinary activity in order to avert it. She addresses herself to cardinals, princes and kings; she negotiates peace between the nations and the Holy See, brings back to God a multitude of souls, and communicates by her teaching and examples a new vigor to those great Religious Orders which are the living, vibrating pulse of the Church. Urban VI, claims her counsels; she hastens to Rome, sustains by her word the Sacred College, alarmed by the threatening storm; and in presence of the evils which overturn the heritage of Christ, she offers herself to God as a victim, and terminates her sacrifice, at thirty -three years of age, by a painful martyrdom.
To write the life of St. Catharine was a task beyond our strength; but God who watches over his own glory, has preserved all the documents that justify that great historical miracle, and we have only filled the part of translator. Instead of judging of facts through the prejudices of our time, and thus tinging them perhaps with a false and fading hue, we have been so happy as to meet with a contemporary author who describes them with incontestable fidelity. The life of St. Catharine by the Blessed Raymond of Capua, her confessor, is a work that may be compared to those churches of the middle ages, which charm us as much by their general harmony, as by the richness of their details. The soul reposes within, far from the contests of the world; she is sensible too of the presence of God which invites her to prayer, and excites her to become better. We had besides another motive for selecting this book, which we are happy to
